[BRAZIL] Fighting the political caste to defeat corruption and adjustment

Luciana Genro, lawyer and PSOL leader

The apparently criminal tragedy with the plane carrying the Chapecoense team took the headlines and shook Brazil. Even so, the House of Representatives and the Senate did not stop voting. And to vote, as always, against the interests of the people. In the Senate, the proposed Constitutional amendment (PEC) that established the spending ceiling was approved in the first round, and in the Chamber, the 10 anti-corruption measures presented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office became an attempt to intimidate prosecutors.

A week earlier, the PSDB was the flagship in the defense of Temer, who classified as criminal the fact that he was recorded in the episode in which the former Minister of Culture, Marcelo Calero, undressed the criminal act of the president and Minister Eliseu Padilha in defense of Geddel’s private interests.

It came as strikingly evident the support of Aécio Neves and the PSDB to this way of doing politics, as Tucanos strove to shield Temer because they want the government to massacre people with its adjustment measures, such as that which freezes social spending for 20 years.

But the consternation with the Chapecoense tragedy did not prevent a strong reaction to this maneuver. In front of Congress, thousands of students gathered to protest. They were greeted with tear gas bombs and tapestry. But they weren’t intimidated, as shown in this photo where a flag of Juntos, in the hands of UNE leader Camila Souza, flutters in the midst of gas.

In another sphere, Lava-Jato’s prosecutors also reacted to the House’s vote, in particular to the clearly intimidating amendment that opens the door for the punishment of members of the Prosecutor’s Office in the exercise of the function.

Among the actions that would be a crime is the presentation, by the Prosecutor’s Office, of an action of administrative improbity against public agent “in a reckless way”. In this case, in addition to imprisonment, prosecutors would be subject to indemnify the accused for material and moral damages or in the image.

But prosecutors threatened to waive the Lava-Jato Operation if the amendment was ratified by the Senate and the political caste felt the coup. Some said the threat was an affront to the “independence of powers.” I have, however, seen a desperate reaction from anyone who is watching his work go underwater and fears being punished for placing great corrupt figures among political businessmen.

From the streets also came some reaction to all of this, with “panelaços” during the news in several cities. Renan Calheiros, the head of the operation to bury Lava-Jato Operation, still tried a maneuver to soon vote the measures in the Senate, but fortunately failed. There is still hope.

All of this shows the critical political situation that we live. After almost 14 years of PT government, we are facing an illegitimate government and institutions totally distanced from the needs of the people. A true damn inheritance.

The fight against corruption has been criminalized. The Congress was an accomplice to a maneuver that was a blow to the Lava-Jato. PT has joined the maneuvers to disfigure the anti-corruption proposals, beacuse it has several leaders involved in scandals.

The Prosecutors Office’s proposals to facilitate the condemnation of corrupt people were defeated on the grounds that they were authoritarian measures such as the “extended loss and illicit enrichment of public servants”. This offensive against anti-corruption measures gained momentum in the wake of a campaign to discredit the Lava-Jato and the Prosecutors’ proposal. The attempt to amnesty the crimes related to slush funding has barely broken.

I’ve been a dissonant voice. I have supported Lava-Jato, even with its mistakes. I refuse to attack Sergio Moro, because I see in him a judge who tries to put the worst type of thief in jail. He has committed abuses, yes, as all the judges of the penal sphere do.

I am a lawyer and I know well the difficulties of those who work in criminal law. The difference is that the abuses he committed were against powerful with great lawyers to defend them. The abuses that occur against prisoners from the favelas do not get repercussions. I also supported the 10 measures of the Prosecutor’s Office, although I disagree with some of them, since, on the whole, they had the merit of guiding in the country the debate on how to facilitate the criminal prosecution white-collar crimes.

PSOL has been heroic in the Chamber. It was in the front line for the cassation of Eduardo Cunha, it was decisive to prevent the approval – in the dead of night – of the amnesty to slush funding and now is in the front line in the request of impeachment against Temer.

We have to be in the front line in the fight against all the political caste that is mobilized to defeat the Lava-Jato, to stabilize the country with the peace of the cemeteries and to impose brutal fiscal adjustment measures that will detonate even more public services and allow fierce attacks on public service, such those Sartori, here in Rio Grande do Sul, is proposing.

We need, as a party, to be the front line in the call to mobilize against adjustment and in defense of the Lava-Jato, in support of all legislative proposals that help to combat corruption and against all those aimed at protecting white-collar criminals, such as amnesty to slush funding.

We know that corruption is intrinsic to the capitalist system and that only those who fight against the system can be coherent in the fight against corruption. But this is a conclusion to which the people must come from their own experience. And it will only come to it if it perceives today the PSOL as the party that denounces the maneuvers of the corrupt caste, mobilizes and carries forward the fight against corruption and against the attacks of Temer and the congress to the social rights.